Magazine

I recently had the great honour to be invited to become an academician of the Academy of Urbanism. The invitation followed an excellent workshop that my colleague Trinley Walker organised to inform his forthcoming Housing Foresight Paper on understanding the differences between housing need and housing demand (but that’s another story), so I see the honour as at least as much a reflection of CPRE’s innovative thinking on placemaking as it is of my personal contribution to the field.

We have just published new guidance What’s Special to You: Landscape Issues in Your Neighbourhood Plan which offers advice to help community groups develop strong landscape policies in their Neighbourhood Plans. It will also be helpful for anyone who is interested in protecting what is special about their local landscape. The guidance includes a number of case studies from existing plans which range from conserving local landscape character, countryside features such as hedgerows, protecting dark skies and designating local green spaces that are valued by a community.

In February the Government launched its Housing White Paper with the promise of a consultation on the way housing targets are calculated. This was welcome news: there is currently no single agreed method of calculating required housing numbers, and the system sees councils struggling to meet unrealistically high targets. But in a speech this week, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid gave the worrying impression that things are about to become much worse. The minister’s stated preference for building more houses in high demand areas could lead to a loss of protected land without addressing genuine housing need.